Refused as a weapon. Refused as a defendant.

AION refuses to be a vector for harm against vulnerable users — minors, the elderly in cognitive decline, the disabled, the coerced, the despairing. It refuses by hard eligibility floors, capacity attestations, cooling-off where the architecture allows, and explicit non-advice framing.

AION also refuses to be the defendant when a bad actor tries to weaponize a vulnerable user against the Service. That refusal lives in the Acceptable Use rules, in the Eligibility & Capacity attestations recorded with each Gate acceptance, and in the architecture’s inability to inspect what was sealed. A claim that “the platform exploited my elderly mother” must answer: who attested capacity at the Gate, who held the memory answer, who controls the heir flow. None of those are AION.

The Service is not available to anyone under 18 years of age, regardless of any lower minimum permitted by local law. The age floor is enforced by the Gate’s explicit attestation; no Vault may be sealed without it.

AION applies COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506), GDPR Article 8 (children’s consent in the EU and UK), the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, and analogous protective regimes by exclusion: AION serves no children. If AION ever has actual or constructive knowledge that a User is under 18, AION terminates that User’s account, declines to seal further Vaults, and assists where lawfully possible to recover any prior Vault to a verified guardian.

AION does not market to children, advertise to children, or design any feature to attract children. The brand voice, the typography, the ceremony, and the legal register are all adult-only by aesthetic and substance.

AION’s threat model identifies cognitive-decline manipulation in elderly holders as Gap E — a real and ongoing risk for any vault designed to handle inheritance. The doctrine has two layers, one shipping today, one shipping in v0.5.

Today: capacity attestation.Every Gate acceptance includes an explicit attestation of sound mind and absence of duress. A User suffering cognitive decline will, by definition, sometimes attest falsely; the architecture cannot detect that. AION’s legal position is that the attestation is the User’s obligation, and that AION is not on notice of a User’s capacity unless the User or a lawful guardian informs the maintainer of record of a conservatorship or guardianship order.

v0.5: Trusted Observer.Users who self-identify as 70 years old or older — or any User who chooses the option — will be encouraged to designate a Trusted Observer: a person other than any heir, who co-attests at sealing that the User appeared to act with capacity and without coercion. The Trusted Observer pattern follows the “witness to a will” tradition used in every common-law jurisdiction. A Vault sealed with a Trusted Observer carries a cryptographic attestation that travels with the audit chain.

Cooling-off.For Vaults the User marks as “irreplaceable” at sealing, the Service will introduce, in v0.4, a 24- to 72-hour cooling-off period during which the User may abort without consequence. The architecture protects the Memory layer already with duress answers; the cooling-off protects the moment-of-decision.

AION’s accessibility commitments are documented at /accessibility. They are not amenities; they are safety. A User who cannot interact with the Gate or the cryptographic flows because of a disability is, in legal terms, a User who has not given informed consent — which is the same problem as a User under 18 or in cognitive decline. The Service must work for the screen reader, the keyboard-only User, the User with limited motor control, and the User with low vision, or the Service’s consent is suspect.

Court-appointed conservatorship or guardianship: a User under such an order may not use the Service without the lawful guardian’s consent. AION will not knowingly process a sealing flow where a guardianship order applies; if AION receives notice of an order, the User’s account is suspended pending guardian involvement.

The Memory layer supports a duress answer: a second answer, distinct from the real one, that produces an alternative plaintext (or no plaintext) on unseal. A User coerced into unsealing under threat gives the duress answer; the coercer receives nothing of value; AION cannot tell the difference and is therefore not on notice. This is the architectural analogue of a panic password.

For sealing under duress: the Gate’s capacity attestation expressly disclaims duress. A Vault sealed under duress, attested falsely, may be later challenged in the User’s domicile’s courts under undue-influence and capacity doctrines that predate AION by centuries. AION’s role ends at the cryptographic record of what was attested at the moment of sealing.

If at any moment of using the Service the User experiences thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or acute psychological crisis, AION urges the User to contact a crisis resource before sealing or unsealing anything irreplaceable.

• United States. 988 — Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Text or call. Available 24/7.
• United States (text). Text HOME to 741741 — Crisis Text Line. Available 24/7.
• United Kingdom. 116 123 — Samaritans. Available 24/7.
• European Union. 112 — emergency services. Country-specific lifelines listed at findahelpline.com.
• Other. findahelpline.com lists verified resources by country and language.

AION will not enforce a sealing operation against a User who appears to be in crisis to the extent the architecture can detect such state. Today the architecture cannot detect emotional state; the cooling-off mechanism (v0.4) is the design response.

A User may seal Vaults related to a beloved animal — photographs, voice recordings, cryptographic instructions for a pet trust’s caretaker. AION will hold those Vaults with the same convergence doctrine as any other. AION does not, however, custody the animal, the pet’s remains, the caretaker relationship, or the funds for the animal’s care. Those flow through your domicile’s pet-trust law (Uniform Trust Code § 408 in most US states; analogous instruments elsewhere) or the relevant estate instrument; AION is the secure messaging layer between you and the caretaker your estate has named.

The same applies to all biological assets: organ-donor directives, DNA records, gamete-storage credentials, medical records. AION holds the cryptographic keys. The underlying assets live in their own legal regimes. A Vault that says “the password to my mother’s medical-record portal” is a Vault holding a password; AION does not custody the records, the portal, or the relationship.

A claim that AION should turn over “a pet” or “a body” or “an organ” is outside the architecture. AION will respectfully refuse and direct the claimant to the relevant probate or medical-records process.

AION is not legal advice, financial advice, investment advice, tax advice, medical advice, mental-health counseling, estate planning, or therapy. The Service makes no recommendations regarding what to seal, whether to seal, who should inherit, what value an asset has, or what tax consequences flow from any action. The User is responsible for retaining qualified professional advice for any decision the User is making in connection with the Service.

A User considering sealing a will, a recovery phrase, a medical directive, or a beneficiary designation should have already consulted the relevant professional. AION is the place where the result is stored; the result itself comes from elsewhere. This is the same posture taken by every reputable cryptographic library: the math is open, the advice is yours to seek.

AION’s role ends at the cryptographic operation. Disputes between heirs, family members, or other claimants regarding the contents, lawful inheritance, or distribution of a Vault are matters of the User’s domicile’s family, succession, and estate law. AION is not a party to those disputes and will not appear in them.

A losing heir who could not produce the threshold of shards, the memory answer, the trustee quorum, or the physical-pilgrimage attestation is a heir who did not meet the convergence requirements set by the Holder at sealing. The remedy, if any, is in the family court under the law of the Holder’s domicile. AION will not modify the architecture to produce a different outcome. AION will not testify as to the Holder’s state of mind, the Holder’s intent, or any other matter outside the cryptographic record.

A bad actor who uses a child, an elderly parent, a disabled relative, or an unwitting third party to attack AION through a sealing flow loses on each of the layers above. The Gate’s eligibility attestation establishes that the actor either lied under penalty of perjury (creating the actor’s own liability under the misrepresentation doctrine of Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 164) or did not lie (in which case there is no vulnerable-user claim to make). The Acceptable Use rules forbid use on behalf of a person who has not given lawful authority, making the actor’s sealing itself a breach. Cryptographic Incapacity prevents AION from being ordered to undo the seal. The Memory layer’s duress answer protects the actual victim from coerced unseal.

AION will fully support a victim of such weaponization in any forum the victim chooses to pursue: the audit chain’s record of attestations is a forensic resource. The bad actor who relied on a vulnerable user’s false attestation discovers, on the forensic record, exactly which lie was told and when. The shield that protects the vulnerable User is the same shield that protects AION; both rest on truthful attestation at the Gate.